A Night at the Opera

Nineteenth century America was the land of dreams, full of opportunity and hope. A poor European could go out there, with no money to his name other than that which he used to pay for his boat fare, land in New York after an arduous few weeks' traveling and within a generation or so, be a millionaire. He could have gone out to California, or the Black Hills during one of the gold rushes and struck lucky (very, very lucky - it was rare for anyone to make any money from gold panning, but those who did often became very, very rich), or gone out to the mid west and made a fortune farming, or inventing a new farming tool (and giving it a fabulous name - the sod-buster, anyone?!) that everyone needed, or maybe started a new business in one of the industrial east coast cities.

Sadly, most immigrants weren't this lucky. Most arrived poor and stayed poor, but there were just enough who did manage to turn themselves into millionaires that the dream was kept alive. Not everyone was happy about this, though. High society was full of snobs - the old New York families were appalled by the uncouth nouveau riche who had money, but none of the 'proper' airs and graces and took every opportunity they could to snub the upstarts. Of course, one had to be obvious about one's snubbing, if it was to have the desired effect. It was no use merely tittering about those new families, with diamonds on their fingers but dirt under their fingernails, amongst one's group of friends - one had to make a point.

An easy, but dreadfully cutting, way to do so would be to refuse the new families - the Vanderbilts, or the Goulds, for example - a box at the opera. This did more than deny them a chance to watch the latest performances of a Mozart or Verdi extravaganza. In certain circles during the late nineteenth century, the opera was the place to be of an evening. Where else but at the Academy of Music could formidable matriarchs find out the latest scandalous gossip; elderly gentlemen have a gentle snooze after one to many glasses of scotch in the interval or the new debutantes coyly flutter their lashes and drop their fans at the feet of the handsome young gentleman who had come over from Europe for the season?

By the early 1880s, the new families had had enough, and, led by Alva Vanderbilt, the millionaires of the city built themselves their own opera house, christening it the Metropolitan Opera House. It took nearly three years to build, but on the night of 22 October 1883, the first ever production - Gounod's Faust - was performed. 

 

The original MET, 1411 Broadway, New York City (pictured 1905)

The original company at the MET - the orchestra, chorus and principle singers - were all Italian and therefore decided to sing everything in their native language, even Faust (which had been written in French) and Carmen (where the lyrics were also in French). However, as most people were attending for the glitz and the glamour and the gossip, only a few opera fanatics were likely to be disappointed by this. The first season made a loss of over half a million dollars, but this was quickly turned around. By 1885 - after only three seasons - the Academy of Music had been eclipsed, and showed its last opera at the end of the '85 season. The MET was now the place to be. 

The outside of the original building was not particularly ornate, interesting or different from most other New York City buildings of the time, but the interior was another story all together. Decorated in red and gold, there were three tiers of 36 boxes (so many seats in fact, that after a year the top tier was removed because there was no use for it). The  bottom tier became known as the diamond horseshoe, and you could be sure that if your family had a box there, you had indeed made it. 

Despite all this grandness, at the heart of it all there was the music. For the 1884-5 season, the radical decision was made that, instead of Italian, all operas should be sung in German, regardless of their original language, mainly because of the large German population of the city  - from the richest to the poorest. Ticket prices were slashed to a mere $3 - though this fairness wasn't universal: 23 members of the men's chorus went on strike for more money, but were quickly dismissed. By the 1890s, the board of directors had tired of the German music and demanded that all operas be sung in the language they were written in. This lead to the 'war of the operas' as the people of German origin insisted that they all be sung in German.

 Cartoon from Puck Magazine, depicting the 'war of the operas' - 1891

The house was destroyed by fire early in 1892, and the year's season was canceled. Upon its reopening the following year, however, operas were performed there in their native language for the first time. This led to the MET premiering many famous operas - most notably, those by Wagner - for the first time on American soil. The halls themselves were truly magnificent, having excellent acoustics even when filled with 3,625 people sitting, and another 244 standing at the front, but even from the earliest days, the stage facilities were known to be sorely inadequate. It took nearly 80 years before something was done about this, though, but in 1966 it was. The MET company moved into a new premises at the Lincoln Center, which not only has excellent acoustics and plenty of room for opera goers but also excellent staging. 

Today, the MET welcomes more than 800,000 people each season, not to mention those who see productions through their HD broadcasts around the world, starring today's best singers, such as the sublime production of Bizet's Carmen which myself and my good friend Charlotte went to see at a cinema in England last year, starring the immensely gifted mezzo soprano Elina Garanca.

It makes me wonder what Alva Vanderbilt and the other 'new money' families would make of it all. No doubt they would be very proud of their legacy, as well they should be...

London Calling

17 October seems to be a somewhat deadly day for Londoners, so, if you are one, I implore you to be extra careful today. I hope this didn't make you panic, as I may have exaggerated slightly there - the number of people killed on this day is pretty low. It's more that the circumstances of their deaths are unusual to say the least...

Firstly, we shall take a trip to 17 October 1091 - though I'd advise you to bring your wellies and possibly a change of clothes, as we're about to experience one of Britain's largest storms - so large, in fact, that it was actually a tornado. It was the earliest recorded tornado on mainland Britain and still holds the record for being the severest. Winds exceeded 200mph and caused London Bridge to fall down, as well as around 600 houses and the church of St. Mary-le-Bow. Astonishingly, records claim that only two people were killed as a result of the storm (reckoned to be a T8 category tornado, for those to whom that may mean something). 

Of course, this being medieval England, everything happened for a reason because God was displeased, and boy, did God have his reasons for being displeased. The King  at the time, William Rufus, the second son of William I (a.k.a the Conqueror), was a bit of a dodgy chap and there were many of his actions which may have resulted in God being pissed enough to send a tornado London's way. He allowed his soldiers to do as they pleased in Britain and lead by example - stealing from churches to fund his extravagant lifestyle of hunting and feasting. He also removed the Archbishop of Canterbury and other religious leaders who disagreed with him and mocked those who decided to go on Crusade, saying that they were engaging in a pointless waste of time and money. It is easy to see why people believed he wouldn't exactly be in God's best books...  

Fast forward a few hundred years, and we're still in London, even though now it's 1814. You could still do with having your wellies and waterproofs with you though, in case you get covered in beer. I am ashamed to say that I initially laughed at this story, but actually it's pretty horrible because it involves eight people dying, three of whom were children. But it should still be filed under 'what a way to go', I think...

The eight were killed on this day in 1814 when several vats of beer in a brewery on Tottenham Court Road ruptured, spilling more than 323,000 imperial gallons  into the street and causing the basements of the houses on the road to fill up with beer. The brewery was taken to court over the accident, but in the end did not have to pay the damages as the event was ruled an Act of God. I shall try not to draw any conclusions about God from this...

Many people rushed out onto the streets (the accident happened in one of the slums of London, so there were a lot of people around) with pots, pans and any other receptacles they could find to prevent the beer from going to waste, whilst others simply lapped it up where they were standing (or lying, after a while...). The final casualty came a few days later, in the form of a man who died from alcohol poisoning, who had clearly tried very hard to stem the flow. A hero, of sorts... 
   

The She-King

So today I was going to write about this being the day that Marie Antoinette was guillotined on, in 1793 as part of the French Revolution. But then something else caught my eye and I decided to write about that, instead. I should like to pretend that this is due to my inner republican not wanting to give the royals anymore time that I absolutely have to (even when they're being beheaded...) or maybe wanting to throw some light on a 'lesser' historical event which has become overshadowed by the French Queen's beheading. That would be a very intellectual stance. I wouldn't want you to think that I was picking what I was going to write about today because I spotted the word 'Hedwig' in it, and it excited my inner Harry Potter nerd. Because that, of course, would be totally false...

On 16 October, 1384, Jadwiga of Poland was crowned King of...er...Poland, which is more intriguing than it first seems because Jadwiga was actually a she and it wasn't like they had the skills for sex-change operations in the fourteenth century (the castrate don't count, as they still had their original sex-organs, just not fully functioning ones...). So Jadwiga managed to retain her femaleness, we can assume, whilst still being a King. Why, you may ask? Because of our shitty patriarchal society. Because, until this point, as in most of Europe, a Queen had not yet ruled the country on her own - preceding Queens had been Queen regnants, meaning they only held that position because they married the King at the time. Jadwiga was crowned King to show that she was a sovereign in her own right, which I guess is early feminism, maybe.

(The first English Queen, for comparison, was "Bloody" Mary I, who ruled from 1553-1558. Some people believe that Matilda [also sometimes called Maud] was the first Queen of England, but this is technically incorrect - though she was the previous King's daughter and her son was crowned King, she herself never had a coronation; was only 'on the throne' for a few months in 1141; didn't have the support of at least half of the country's nobles [due to the Civil War over whether she or her cousin Stephen should be ruling] and wasn't exactly in it to further the feminist cause, more to further the amount of land and money she owned.)  

But back to Jadwiga the sort-of feminist. She was born sometime between 3 October 1374 and 18 February 1374. I have been unable to establish the exact reason for the discrepancy in recording her birth date, but I think we can safely say it has more to do with poor clerical administration than her mother going through the longest labour ever. She spent some time growing up in the Viennese Court and became betrothed, at the age of four to William of Hapsburg, though this was later called off at the behest of Polish nobles, and she instead became engaged and then married to Jagiello, Grand Duke of Lithuania when she was the ripe old age of 12 and he 26. When they married, in 1386, Jagiello changed his name to Ladislaus and was also crowned King of Poland, which must have been quite confusing to explain to the neighbours.

Jadwiga, King of Poland - 1373/4-1399

By all accounts, Jadwiga was a great beauty with long blonde hair and blue eyes (though I'm not sure how popular you would have been in the court if you had written that she was as ugly as sin), and surprisingly tall for a medieval lady - an excavation of her remains in the 1970s put her at an impressive 1.8m. She was also very clever, speaking Polish, Bosnian, German, Hungarian, Serbian and Latin as well as having an interest in the arts, music and science. She was incredibly pious and devout, and apparently had enough miracles attached to her for Pope John Paul II to canonize her in 1997. These days, you can refer to her as Saint Jadwiga, or, in English, Saint Hedwig, which pleases my inner nerd probably more than it should.

Sadly, Jadwiga died one month after giving birth, along with her baby daughter at the age of only 26, though her husband continued to rule Poland for another 35 years. She had left her jewels to Krakow Academy to finance its renovation. Krakow Academy is today known as Jagiellonian University and is still going to this day.    

1066 And All That

Everyone knows that on 14th October, 1066 William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings by slaying Harold Godwinson whilst he rode his horse shooting an arrow in Harold's eye defeating the English troops, and most people know how it happened (if in doubt, just witter on about hills and 'the advantage' and superiority . . . actually, this will make you seem knowledgeable about almost all battles that have ever occurred). But fewer people know the ins and outs of why it actually happened, preferring to see William as the evil Frenchman who came in and stole the crown from the rightful heir. As usual, if only it were that simple . . .

There is an old English king who's name you have to be very careful how you spell - Cnut (no, really). You might have heard of him as the King who tried to stop the tides and he's generally portrayed as a bit of a div, but this couldn't be further from the truth. Cnut was Danish, a Viking who took control of England as well as the Scandinavian countries and he was very clever. The tide story has been manipulated over the years - he was actually trying to prove that no one, not even the King, could control the weather - and he pretty much let the British get on with ruling the country themselves, accepting that the laws already in place were good ones, and he wasn't going to be the one to rock the boat. "Letting Britain get on with ruling itself" meant that the top lords were in charge, controlling everything, sometimes acting fairly, sometimes not but deferring to Cnut where he required it. One of these Lords was Earl Godwine, who was a bit of a suck-up - he married a Danish aristocrat and gave his children Viking names - Harold and Tostig.

Anyway, Cnut snuffed it in 1035 and his two sons Harold and Harthacnut had to battle it out as to who became King. But Harthacnut (I love writing that . . .) wasn't really that interested in England, preferring to rule Scandinavia so Harold got the throne - only not for long. He died a very gorey death, almost certainly on Earl Godwine's orders. You see, Mr. Godwine senior had a plan - a descendant of the House of Wessex (the line of English kings who had been in charge before the Vikings came over), called Edward, had been sent over to Normandy to be raised in safety over there. Edward was now an adult - and in full position to be crowned King of England. Godwine reckoned that he could sponsor Edward, help him to regain the throne and support him, and in return Edward could marry his daughter, Edith and the Godwines would therefore have a direct line to the throne when Edward died (which, knowing the Earl's ways, might have happened sooner than expected).

So, Edward was crowned King in 1041 with help from Godwine, and married Edith. But he wasn't actually that keen on the Earl and didn't trust him, so instead spent his time trying to build up and utilise his cross-channel connections with his friends back in Normandy. Through this, he must have started to hear of "William the Bastard" - the Duke of Normandy's illegitimate son by one of the palace maids - who was starting to build up a brutal reputation (the Normans' decendancy from a Viking tribe may have had something to do with this).

The final straw for Edward regarding the Godwines, though, came when the Earl attacked some Norman knights whom Edward had invited over, upon their arrival. Edward removed them of their property and sent the Earl and his sons packing. He and two of his sons went to join a third son, Tostig, in Flanders, and his fourth son, Harold escaped to Ireland. Edith was shut up in a convent. Now, Edward chose not to remarry and it was becoming increasingly clear that he was to produce no heirs. Some people believe that this is because he was gay but I personally don't believe that to be true. There have definitely been gay monarchs in the past - Edward II is the classic example - and there is much evidence to show who their lovers were. But with Edward (who was later to become known as 'the Confessor'), there's no evidence to suggest he had any lovers - male or female - so I think that he was possibly just asexual.

Anyway, there were no kids, so he had to look elsewhere for a heir - and here comes the bit that all the Norman accounts swear are definitive proof that William was the chosen one. In 1051, Edward chose a new Archbishop of Canterbury, and sent him to Rome to have the appointment approved by the Pope. But before he got there, the Archbishop was instructed to stop off in Normandy and inform William that Edward had chosen him as his successor. William's claim to the throne was tenuous at best - they were barely related, mere second cousins once removed - but Edward did not want to see the crown fall back into the hands of the Vikings, or worse, the Godwines. 

However, Edward had underestimated both the Godwines' popularity and the Normans' unpopularity. On hearing of his plans to make William his successor, Edward came under a lot of pressure from the other chief lords and earls who were friends of the Godwines and in 1052 had to perform an embarrassing climbdown, reinstating the Earl and apologising to him. This would have been mortifying for Edward - Earl Godwine was now in charge in all but name - Edward had authority but very little power. 

Then, in 1053, the Earl died. His son Harold rose up to fill his shoes - and then some. Everyone loved him - he was tall, handsome, and, when he defeated a Welsh army and took control of a large part of the country, nobles and commoners across the land (though presumably not in Wales) believed he could do no wrong. He was indispensable, keeping the ruffians off the borders of England, the King's right hand man. It seemed inevitable that he would have dreams of becoming king. Then, for some reason no one's quite sure about, Harold ended up in William's court in 1064. This is where the Bayeux Tapestry begins. At first, the two acted like comrades - William looking after Harold; the two of them offering up sisters for marriage here there and everywhere - but it soon became clear that they were not equal comrades. William made Harold one of his knights, and Harold swore an Oath.

In medieval Europe, Oaths were taken incredibly seriously. Unless you wanted the wrath of all that was holy coming down upon your head, you did not take one in vain. Anyway, as usual, there is contention as to exactly what the Oath said - Harold's supporters say he just promised to be William's man in England, but not to help defend his right to the throne; William's that he promised to help him become crowned king. He returned to England, to await Edward's death. The King obliged in 1066 - without having officially named a successor.

This didn't actually matter too much - the witan (council of lords who were in charge, a very non-democratic forerunner to Parliament) had to approve the previous King's choice before he could be crowned, or name a successor if the previous King hadn't. To nobody's surprise, Harold Godwineson was chosen and he quickly became King Harold.

Of course, this quickly led to other troubles - a Viking claim to the throne led by Harald Hardrada with aid from t'other Harold's estranged brother Tostig and of course William himself invading and conquering, but I'll stop here. I hope you enjoyed this monster of a post :) 

A Brief History of Latvia

 Christmas in Riga

Let's go to Latvia. Because it has a fascinating History and some of the world's loveliest looking Christmas markets and because why not. History in British schools is focused far too much on England (and, under the new government's plans, will be even more so, which is just what we need, especially as children will be growing up thinking the Empire was A Good Thing. Don't get me wrong, there weren't some benefits from it. For example...um...we ensured introduced our language to the whole world, thus ensuring that school children no longer have to worry about being able to talk about their Aunt's pen when they go to France, as who even speaks French anyway? As for all those other languages...well isn't it enough that we just know their names? We don't have to bother talking in them - everyone can address us in English, and we can just shout louder until they understand us. We're so damn cultured.) so I have very little idea about what went on in Latvia, or indeed most other Eastern European countries. After a bit of reading, though, I feel I'm ready to take you on a whistle-stop tour of the country, though I apologize in advance if I have anything wrong.

We'll base ourselves in Riga, which is the capital city of Latvia. There had been a few ancient settlements on the site of what is now Riga, but the city really took off in the twelfth century, when some German mercenaries established it as an outpost for trading with the Baltic people. Everything was going swimmingly, until Albert, Bishop of Livonia arrived in the city in 1201 armed with 23 ships and 1,500 crusaders. Despite being a Bishop, Albert clearly didn't know his Bible too well as he proceeded to forcibly take the city as his. He established the Order of Livonian Brothers of the Sword (because he wasn't very good at catchy names) and converted the people of Riga to Christianity (one hopes he wasn't leading by example).

For the next few centuries, everything went as swimmingly as it could in medieval Europe. There were, of course, outbreaks of plague and other such things, but the country wasn't really much different to Britain, or Spain, or any other country really. Riga - indeed, Latvia as a whole - was part of the Holy Roman Empire, which, despite the somewhat misleading name, meant it was actually a part of the German Empire, so the largest ethnic group in the city were German, rather than Latvian. The city was mainly used as a gateway to trade with the Russians and other Baltic peoples so the city was remarkably cosmopolitan, with influences from Prussia, Russia, Poland, Lithuania and of course Latvia itself.
 

The country converted to Protestantism with the rest of the Lutheran countries in the mid-sixteenth century, which meant that when the Thirty Years' War occurred (this is one of the hardest wars to summarize in one sentence, but here goes: a series of incredibly destructive  conflicts involving most of mainland Europe, with the two great powers of the time, the French monarchy and the Hapsburg monarchy - the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - ostensibly about religion - the whole Catholicism vs. Protestantism thing - but which ended up being about power and money and who controlled what) the King of Sweden gained control of the city (supposedly to help support the largely Protestant population but mostly because of the trading, and therefore economic, benefits). 

The city remained under Swedish rule until 1710, when Peter the Great invaded and bought the city under Russian control. Despite the implementation of Russian as the country's official language, the demographic make-up of Riga was slowly changing and by the mid nineteenth century, Latvians were the majority ethnic group in the city. This coincided with the rise of the middle class in the country, who were very patriotic. In 1873, the first Latvian Song Festival was organised (a celebration of folk songs and traditional dancing) which still takes place in the city, every five years - the next concert being in 2013. 

All this was soon to change however, with the twentieth century being one of the most turbulent centuries in Latvia's History. The Russian Revolution of 1917 meant that it was quite easy for the German Army to march into the country and take over in 1918, but under the terms of the armistice, they were forced to grant Latvia freedom. It was the first time the country had been independent in its whole history. Riga, the capital city, prospered, as did the whole country. A democratic Parliament was implemented. Latvian was reinstated as the country's national language. The people flourished.

Then World War Two happened.

Stalin made a deal with Hitler in which Hitler allowed the Soviet Union to annex the country in 1940, but then the promise was reneged on in 1941 and the Germans ruled there until October 13th, 1944 when the Red Army came marching back in to take over once more. The war had decimated the country. Latvia had lost one third of its population, and its independence. The Jewish population had all but vanished under the Nazi regime; so called "Nazi collaborators" (mostly those of Latvian origin) were deported to Siberia and many thousands of Russians and other Soviet peoples were emigrated to Latvia to help suppress the native population. By 1975, less than 40% of Riga's inhabitants were ethnically Latvian.

Fortunately the Soviet Union was beginning to crumble by the late '80s, and on 21st August, 1991, the country was declared independent once again. Today it is as democratic and diverse as any other European country; a member of the European Union and a country which celebrates all of its diverse heritage. In 2001, the city of Latvia celebrated it's 800th birthday and it continues to thrive as a country to this day.

This post would not have been possible without my dear friend Charlotte and her extensive knowledge of and love for Latvian born opera singers.

American Dreams

So, today is Columbus Day in America, because apparently, on October 12, fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and made landfall in the Bahamas, therefore discovering America. There are two main problems with this - firstly, that he believed that he had in fact discovered South Asia (I should like to make a joke here, but I couldn't follow a map of my own house, so this would be somewhat hypocritical) and secondly, of course, that there were already people living there - all over North and South America, actually - who didn't really think the country needed to be discovered.

(As an interesting aside, it is pretty much accepted now by most historians that the Vikings found their way over to the Americas sometime during the Dark Ages, though they possibly didn't leave Canada, or the very far north states - possibly because of their generally cooler climates, mimicking the geography of the areas they had come from.)

Columbus Day was first celebrated in 1792, in New York and is now a national holiday in the United States. It is also, according to wikipedia, related to Canadian Thanksgiving, which makes slightly more sense in a way than the reasons behind American Thanksgiving. I always wondered about how exactly they celebrated Thanksgiving during the mid-nineteenth century in America. From then, until the start of the twentieth century, the idea of Manifest Destiny (that it was God's wish for the white settlers to go out and take over the whole continent) really took hold, and the pioneers went out across the country. They didn't really like the Native Americans being "in their way" though, and generally treated them pretty badly. How on earth did they seriously manage to give thanks to the first American people for showing their ancestors how to survive in the first harsh winter, at the same time as 'clearing' the Indians' ancestors off what was rightfully their land? It makes no sense.

You can understand the pioneers' longing to just go out and conquer the unconquerable new territory though. Reading old accounts of the Oregon trails, I sometimes want to pack up all my worldly goods into a wagon and trail across the continent to the west coast, with its sunshine and greenery and succulence. Except also not really, because there was no internet or hand sanitizer and an awful lot of dysentery, which frankly I don't think is much of a substitute. And I could've ended up in a situation like the Donner Party did in 1846/7 who ended up having to eat each other to avoid starving to death and that would've probably put quite a downer on things.

I could have been a Forty Niner instead and gone out to strike it rich in the American Gold Rush in California. Or I could have lived in a log cabin on the prairies like the Ingalls-Wilders, or in a clapboard house with a porch like the Marches in Massachusetts, with a beautiful boy as a next-door neighbour. Maybe I'd have been a servant in New York at the turn of the century, come over to escape the unrest in Europe. I could've landed at Ellis Island, after seeing the statue of liberty as I arrived, and walked out of the immigration centre into the city, walking a few blocks until I found a newspaper vendor, where I might have scoured the adverts for a family of upper class socialists who needed a lady's maid to dress them up before a big night out at the Metropolitan Opera.

I could have been a fifties teenager, driving around a small town in my boyfriend's car as we listened to the new-fangled rock'n'roll music on the radio. Or a girl growing up in the pre-Civil War South, where the men are all gentlemen who'd call you a peach and walk by the roadside with you so your skirt didn't get splashed by the passing carriages, never dreaming that sweet little you were a member of the Underground Railroad, helping escaped slaves.

I'm probably almost definitely romanticizing all of this, which I will fully admit to. I do have a slight  inexplicable obsession with History and America though, so when the two combine, it's always something can get super excited about. Keep your fingers crossed that I get onto the American History course I've applied for at uni, yeah? :) 

Here's Bruce. He can say it much better than me.

That other lady with the lamp

Have you ever seen the film Carry On Up The Khyber? I'd recommend it, if you wanted to get an accurate historical view of what life was like for the military top brass in any British occupied country in Victorian times. Except really...

We're not very good at wars, I don't think. We like to see ourselves as the peacemakers, or the people who are fighting "for the greater good" against "the bad guys". We're the paternal influence; the father who threatens his children mainly with words, unless they do something really bad and we have to step in and give them a brief, but painful thrashing with the back of our hand. Or I think that's how those Tories think, anyway. Fortunately for me, I will never be in a position to check if that's true, unless something truly awful happens to me and/or I meet Doctor Who and he takes me back in his TARDIS to the Tory heyday of the mid-Victorian Empire.

[Note that what I said above pertains only to actual wars and fighting, not how we treated the people in the Empire. They were not looked upon paternally; they were treated as the scum of the earth instead. Stupid, stupid Empire builders.]

Anyway, during the first half of the nineteenth century, Britain - or, indeed, Europe as a whole - didn't really have much military experience. Of course, there were the Napoleonic conflicts, earlier on, but the were all over by 1815 when the Duke of Wellington won the Eurovision Song Contest with 'Waterloo' defeated Napoleon in battle. After this point, there weren't really any major wars or conflicts which the European nations were overly concerned with - until the Crimean War of 1854-56.

The seige of Sebastopol began today in 1854, making up part of the war. I don't want to go into too much detail about the war itself, because it made up a slightly yawn enduing part of my A Level course, but I would like to say this: if you discount all the people being killed in the battles (I am terribly sorry for the callousness of that phrase), this war was pretty much the biggest farce ever. 

Many, many men were killed in the war, on both sides (Russia, fighting the British, French, Turkish and Austrian alliance), but barely any were killed on the battlefield - most died because of the unsanitary conditions they were living in, or the cold. The Charge of the Light Brigade left so many men dead because their commanders weren't quite sure which instructions to follow, and sent them down the wrong valley, where they were shot to pieces by the Russians. The most use the (newly invented) telegraph was put to, was when The Times' correspondent used it to send back newspaper reports to the people at home. In short, the war was as big of a farce as Carry On Up The Khyber is. 

Something else despicable about the Empire is the way the British people used to treat people of any race and/or colour other than their own. An example of this can be found here - Florence Nightingale, the Lady with the Lamp, went out to nurse and generally Do Good, and schoolkids all over the land learn about her in their History lessons in primary school. How lovely. And I guess it is, but this sadly means that Mary Seacole is overlooked. Seacole did exactly the same thing as Nightingale, but had to pay her own way over there due to not having as privileged a background, where she could rely on her parents to pay her way in life. The only reason she is not taught in schools to the extent Nightingale is, though, is because she's black.

And there was me hoping we might have moved on from that way of thinking... Mary Seacole can have pride of place as the illustration of the day, though, so here she is: 

If I could explain it any better I'm sure I would

I'm a bit sad today. Not seriously so, you understand; it's mostly loneliness. I've taken a gap year, and all my friends have now jetted off to exotic locals Coventry, Wales, Manchester and the like to study new and exciting subjects Chaucer and Mathematics. Still, whatever floats their boats, eh? I, of course, don't begrudge them their time or happiness at their various universities - indeed, I am glad they all seem to be enjoying it so much. But sometimes, when I'm stuck in a tiny village with nothing going on in the arse end of nowhere, things do get a bit lonely.

And yet! It does not necessarily have to be so. I haven't really felt lonely all day - it's only now, when they're all out at the pub or various clubs, having lots of fun that I really miss them, because they're not here to talk to me. Over the course of today, I have spoken to my friends in Wales, Manchester, Shropshire, Coventry and Birmingham via a combination of email, instant message, text message, Skype, Facebook and Twitter (because I am cutting edge a poncy middle class child). If I wasn't so socially retarded, I could even phone them and see how their days had been. In a few weeks, I shall hop on a train and even visit a few of them.

So actually, I'm very lucky. A lot of people, even in this day and age, do not have the option to do any of this. Further back in time, very few people did. Carrier pigeons, whilst generally reliable, aren't always the speediest forms of communication, though they did have the advantage of being less likely to betray you or be intercepted than a rider on horseback was. If you wanted to stay in touch with someone in the thirteenth century, your options were pretty limited.

This brings me to Isabella of Angoulême. Clearly... On this day, in 1200, she was crowned Queen Consort of England, a few months after her marriage to King John I. This is Isabella (obviously quite a few years after her marriage...):

I'm not sure if you can tell from her tomb, but when she married John, on August 24th of the same year, she was heralded as a great beauty - medieval Historians sometimes call her the Helen of the Middle Ages. This was a double edged sword for her - the British people were, apparently, pleased to have such a beautiful wife for their King (and there was me thinking the excessive photoshopping of women in magazines and the like to "bring them up" to the required "standard" was a modern thing...), but she turned said King into a lazy scoundrel. Kings were expected to get up at five o'clock in the morning (effing hell) whereas John used to like to stay in bed with her until nearly midday. This was terribly shocking to medieval sensibilities, and didn't exactly do much for John's reputation as a good-for-nothing waster. The common people of England deemed her a siren, and she was well known for being vain.

Isabella was also French, as you may have guessed. Again this was a double edged sword, as whilst the French had made up the ruling elite ever since the Norman Conquest of 1066, there were still some displaced English nobles who considered themselves - or, to be more precise, their daughters - more worthy of the throne. But she did manage to provide the country with five healthy children, including the future King Henry II, so she was forgiven most things.

Despite the fact that she was so vain, well known for having a terrible temper to match her husband's, a clear royalist and a snob, who detested her lower ranking once her husband had died, which left her merely Countess of Angoulême, I feel rather sorry for Isabella. She was born in 1188, and those who are good with numbers will have spotted that this made her a mere 12 years old when she married John (who was 32 at the time). She would have been relatively alone (I say relatively - clearly she had numerous servants with her, but none of the family and friends she had grown up with) in a foreign country, where most people treated her with suspicion, and, in the case of most men, gruesome lust. 

If I can be lonely, a mere two hour drive from most of my friends - nearer in some cases - with instant virtual access to them if I require - I cannot begin to imagine what life must have been like for Isabella, a little French girl, a pawn in some diplomatic marriage or another, traded off in exchange for money, or land, or both, suddenly thrust into the middle of English court life. I apologize if this has come across as very 'poor little rich girl'; that was not my intention. I merely wanted to raise the issue once again that things are never as straightforward as they first appear, particularly when it comes to History.

I really wish I didn't write so clinically, that my style was more prosaic. I'm not even sure I explained that clearly. If I could explain it any better, I'm sure I would...

The Day Everyone Is Well Pissed Off

So, a few years ago, a scientist type published a report which he said named the most depressing day of the year. I can't remember all the details, but I think it was something like the second or third Monday in January, because of people having lots of debts from Christmas still, the Christmas break being over, the weather being cold and miserable, the fact that it was a Monday, things like that. As with all statistics, he claimed, the result wouldn't necessarily be true individually - if, say, your hamster was to die on the fourth Wednesday of June, you're more likely to be depressed then - but globally, you can see where he's coming from.  It's not the most cheerful time of the year. The man has a point, you could say.

I don't know if similar research has been conducted on other days of the year - the happiest day, or the most stressful - but I would like to make a nomination for the angriest day: today. On 7th October, according to BBC History:  

• in 1571, the so called 'Holy League' of the Papal States, Spain and Venice (doesn't it sound like a football league or something?) socked it to the Ottoman navy (the Ottoman Empire was a huge Turkish Empire, which ruled from 1299-1922, which most likely means that they were total tyrannic bastards very good at controlling their subjects, and naturally had their best interests at heart...) at the Battle of Lepanto;
• in 1944, there was a revolt at the Aushwitz prison, where the inmates killed several of the SS Guards and destroyed a creamatorium;
• in 2001, George Bush's government officially launched their 'Operation Enduring Freedom' a.k.a the 'War on Trrrrr' against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. 

According to Wikipedia, on this day, there were battles and/or wars being fought in 1513, 1777, 1780, 1800, 1828, 1864, 1870, 1879, 1940, 1942, 1958 and 1991. Now, obviously as a History student, I am aware that a lot of History, rightly or wrongly, is decided by fighting. But this is an awful lot of warfare to occur on one day alone, and therefore I believe that some geeky maths type could come up with an equation based on probability logarithms (or whatever the hell it is that statisticians use...) to prove that today is the angriest day of the year. 

To finish, as an antidote to all this anger and misery, I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that, on this day in 1916, the most lopsided college football game ever took place in America, when Cumberland College played Georgia Tech. The Georgian's were victorious, winning 222-0. No, really:

Ellen Wilkinson and the Jarrow March

Seventy four years ago today, on October 5th, 1936, 200 able-bodied men from the north-eastern town of Jarrow set off for London. Over the next few days, they marched 300 miles, accompanied by a second-hand bus which carried their cooking utensils and bedding. Whilst marching, they sang songs and played mouth organs to keep up morale, and carried an oak box with gold lettering, containing a petition, signed by 11,000 citizens of the town. Signatures were  also collected on a second petition from the numerous sympathetic people they passed on their way down to London. The march was hard, but medical care was provided by the Inter Hospital Socialist Society's students. 

Why were they marching? What did their protest hope to achieve?

About a year previously, the main employer in the town - Palmer's shipyard - had been closed down. In Jarrow, as with many towns in the north-east, employment rates were at 70%. The men of Jarrow were dependent on their wives' or daughters' wages (themselves hardly substantial), which was not something that was culturally acceptable at that time. The town itself was in dire shape. In the words of the local MP, Ellen Wilkinson, it was 

"... utterly stagnant. There was no work. No one had a job except a few railwaymen, officials, the workers in the co-operative stores, and a few workmen who went out of the town... the plain fact [is] that if people have to live and bear and bring up their children in bad houses on too little food, their resistance to disease is lowered and they die before they should." [source]

Wilkinson herself is a very interesting figure. Born in 1891, she won a scholarship to the University of Manchester, never married, was briefly a member of the Communist Party, often visited Spain (during the Civil War there) and Germany to protest against Fascist groups - especially the rise of Hitler - and as Minister for Education during the post-war Labour government, managed to get the school leaving age raised to 15, despite the huge demand for extra buildings and teachers this would require. All in all, she was an amazing woman, achieving more in her lifetime than most people could in several. I would very much like to be her.

 

Ellen Wilkinson MP, 1891-1947

She also went on the march with the men of Jarrow, and presented their petition to parliament for them. As the shipyard had been closed, due to the worldwide economic downturn (sound familiar?), the men demanded that a steelworks be built to bring employment back to their town. The government, despite being largely Conservative, were not unsympathetic to their plight - nor indeed the similar plight of other men in the working towns who had been laid off due to the Depression, but there was very little they could do. There was a general lack of response to the Jarrow situation (though a ship-breaking yard was established in 1938), although their policies of  increasing domestic consumption and implementing a cheap mortgage scheme which lead to a house building boom did help boost the economy slightly.

Ultimately, though, it took World War Two, and the need for armaments and the like to give industry the boost it needed, and therefore lift the economy out of depression. I do not pretend to understand economics at all, and will defer to almost anyone's knowledge on how to avoid recessions and depressions, but surely, surely there must be a way of finding enough jobs so that everyone is employed and can afford to put food on the table, without having said jobs involve making weapons to kill others? I hope that that is not just wishful socialist thinking...

We really shouldn't talk about this

Never talk about politics or religion with your friends, unless you know that they also voted for Ed Miliband in the Labour leadership elections want to discover that they're secretly Tory they are pretty much unoffendable.

But, even though this is about religion, it's such an amusing story that I wanted to share it with you anyway, because I highly doubt that I could offend you anymore than I usually do with it. Today, in 1537, the first English language Bible (called the Matthew Bible) was published, by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale. This was happening at around the same time as Henry VIII's money grabbing scheme religious epiphany, where he decided to break with Rome and form the Church of England. Initially, however, the Church of England only differed from the Catholic Church in Rome by having the King, rather than the Pope, as head of the Church, so all services were conducted in Latin, and all Bibles were published in Latin. 

William Tyndale c. 1494 - 1536

A few years down the line, however, Henry wanted to bring the country more in line with other Protestant countries, and therefore decided that English language Bibles should be present in all churches. (This was, sadly, all a little bit too late for poor old William Tyndale, who had been put to death in 1536 for his work translating.) A royal decree was passed, and English Bibles were sent to all churches in the land. Obviously, this didn't go down too well with the Catholics, but even some Protestants weren't too happy with the arrangements - particularly those in Devon and Cornwall.

In 1547, they began the Western Rebellion, which was a protest against the new religious order, as well as various other socio-economic problems in the counties. One of the items on their list of grievances, though, was that they absolutely did not want the English language Bibles in their churches. When asked why, they explained that, as they spoke in a Gaelic dialect, they couldn't understand the English translation. It was pointed out to them that all most all of them couldn't understand the Latin Bible, either. "Yes," they replied. "But that's the one we know but don't understand. We'd much rather have that than one we don't know and don't understand."


I guess, in a weird way, they did have a point. And the Cornish always have been a bit strange (in a nice way, you understand). Why else would they have such an inexplicable love for fudge?!

The True Prince of Wales

Having written such serious pieces the last couple of days, I think it's time we had something a little more lighthearted. It is also absolutely pouring with rain - horrible, slanted, icy rain, the kind that hits you from every angle and soaks through your waterproof - so I think it's also time we took a trip to Wales. On this day in 1283, the Prince of Gwynedd - Dafydd ap Gruffydd - became the first person to be executed by being hanged, drawn and quartered. A dubious honour indeed.

What exactly is hanging, drawing and quartering, I hear you ask? Let me explain. [Those of weak heart/mind/stomach should probably skip this paragraph.] First, you take your criminal and attach him to a horse - or maybe two horses, if he was a bit chubby - via a hurdle.You then draw him on the hurdle across town, to his place of execution. (So I guess it really should be called drawing, hanging and quartering...) Next, you string up your criminal (who is having this done to him because he's been convicted of High Treason by the way) and hang him until he's almost dead, before cutting him down. Then (and here comes the really gory bit), you cut off his 'privy members' and take out his bowels 'and burn them before him'. You would then have  him (and it was always him - women were merely burned at the stake, for the sake of 'decency') beheaded, and his body chopped into quarters and sent to various parts of the country, as a warning to anyone else who might have been considering committing a treasonous act. 

All this, of course, took place in a public arena - partially to maximize the indignity the criminal had to suffer, and partially because it was a great form of entertainment in Medieval Britain. (Anyone who is tutting about the uncivilized barbarians who make up medieval society should think carefully about the sorts of films people nowadays like to watch - the kind which have wimps like me hiding behind the sofa and sleeping with the light on for days, and imagine what they might think of us.)

And what had good old Dafydd done to deserve such a fate? He was sentenced "to be drawn to the gallows as a traitor to the King who made him a Knight, to be hanged as the murderer of the gentleman taken in the Castle of Hawarden, to have his limbs burnt because he had profaned by assassination the solemnity of Christ's passion and to have his quarters dispersed through the country because he had in different places compassed the death of his lord the king".

You see, after his brother died in 1282, Dafydd was proclaimed Prince of Wales and decided to attack Hawarden Castle in Shropshire as a display of power, which didn't exactly go down too well with Edward I, to whom Dafydd was supposed to be paying homage. Edward amassed an army, and by January 1283, had captured most of the heartland of Wales. Dafydd and his supporters held out for another six months or so, hiding in the valleys, but were eventually captured on 22 June. He was tried for high treason against the King (again, the first person to suffer this fate) in Chester, and naturally found guilty. His sons were imprisoned in Bristol Castle, for the rest of their lives, where they died in circumstances which can best be described as mysterious; his daughters sent to convents around the country. 

Because of this, Dafydd not only holds the title of a famous first, but also a famous last - he was the last Welsh Prince of Wales. Edward I made his eldest son (also called Edward) Prince of Wales on his birth, and the title has been held by the current monarch's eldest son ever since. 

One can understand why the Welsh may not be so happy about this arrangement... 

A Tsar is Born

2nd October 1552 - conquest of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible

Ivan the Terrible, 25.08.1530 - 28.03.1584

So, Ivan the Terrible did some pretty terrible things, clearly. (It was after the victory in Kazan on this day in 1552 that he was given the name 'Grozny', or 'the Terrible'.) He was a Bad Person. The conquest of Kazan, which involved amongst other things, decimating the Muslim population and laying siege to the city for five months, took place in what is commonly known as his 'Good Reign'. At the age of 13, he had someone who had annoyed him thrown to a pit of ravenous hunting dogs. There wasn't much left of him, at the end of that debacle... As they say (probably. I've never actually heard anyone say this) "he's not the sort of man you'd want to meet down a dark alley in the dodgy part of town".

But that's not what I want to get into today. Today, I want to talk some more about this whole good versus evil thing that I touched on yesterday. Again, as with Hitler, I'm not going to try and excuse the bad things that Mr. Terrible (and I do hope someone called him that...) did. I would instead like to explore why he did those things, and show that things aren't always as straightforward as they first seem in History, as with everything else in life.

Ivan didn't exactly have what you'd call an easy childhood. By the age of seven, he and his deaf-mute brother were orphaned, and the nature of their parents' deaths had been suspicious to say the least. After their mother died, they were placed in the care of regents - the Russian Boyars, or rich, land-owning nobles. Though these men (of course, this was the sixteenth century. They were all men.) treated the princes with respect in public, in private they were treated horrifically, often roaming through the palace with no shoes or clothes, and had to beg for food. Frequent displays of power by the Boyars meant Ivan would have thought nothing of armed men bursting into his chambers in the night and removing whatever they could of value. Aged 13, one of his closest confidants was skinned alive and his remains left for public viewing in a Moscow square. 

Ivan wasn't perfect, by any means. This incident lead to the perpetrators being thrown to the dogs, as mentioned above, and Ivan had already started taking his frustrations out on animals. Still, he wasn't all bad. Aged 17, he was crowned Grand Prince of Russia, though he insisted upon taking the title of Tsar (Russian for Caesar) and thus became the first in a long line of rulers of the same name. The Russia he inherited was a messy, desolate place, with no roads, no banks and no infrastructure, and he set about introducing reforms where he could to try to make it a better place. 

He selected a bride from an untitled Boyar family - Anastasia Romanovna. By almost all accounts, theirs was a very happy, if somewhat short-lived marriage. It was Anastasia's death that brought upon the 'Bad Reign'. She had had a long, painful illness which lasted a good few years before she died, which according to most accounts, devastated Ivan. He believed that she, like his mother, had been poisoned by the noblemen at court. Interestingly, a twentieth century excavation by scientists showed that the bodies of both Ivan's wife and mother contained ten times the normal amount of mercury, even after allowing for the popular mercury based foundations worn by noblewomen (I'm not sure if you'd call the British Elizabethan's lead based products better or worse...).

Is it such a surprise that, with such a turbulent, dangerous and, to be frank, upsetting early life, Ivan did the terrible things that earned him his infamous nickname? Well, maybe, maybe not - these things are always subjective, after all. But it remains true that, early on in his reign, Ivan set in place a lot of reforms to make Russia a better place, even though many of his loved ones were killed by noblemen seeking to further their own ambitions. And okay, he did start sieges and wars which killed a lot of people. But this doesn't necessarily make him different from most sixteenth century rulers, most of whom don't have 'the Terrible' or a similar moniker attached to their name. Sometimes, History is unfair on you, and it's only those who look further who find out the whole story.

Oh, and here's something I came across which you might find useful in a pub quiz one day: Ivan's wife was called Anastasia Romanovna. Her family eventually became known as the Romanovs, and this dynasty ruled Russia in their own right as Tsars for many, many years - in fact, the last Tsar, Nicolas II, was a Romanov. So in that way, the first Tsar of Russia and the last Tsar of Russia were related to each other! Cool, no? No? Well, maybe it's just me then...

The Best Laid Plans (see also: the Munich Agreement)

I didn't intend to start writing today, but it is raining and I have a cup of tea, and I really should be doing something more important, so I suppose it's inevitable that I'm sat here planning to write about...Hitler. I know, I know. I know. I wasn't going to touch that whole topic, ever. But never say never; the best laid plans will always go wrong and other assorted cliches. I promise I'll write about Ancient Greece or something, next time.

Anyway, yes. Czechoslovakia. On 1st October, 1938, German troops marched into the Sudetenland,  Czechoslovakia, under the auspices of the Munich Agreement. What does this even mean? Well, in very, very simple terms, the Munich Agreement was a little bit of paper that the British Prime Minister at the time, Neville Chamberlain, came back from Germany with, on which was a promise from Hitler that he would not attempt to attack Britain or France in return for them accepting that the Sudetenland (an area of Czechoslovakia) should be ceded to Germany, and, on 1st October, he duly marched in.

(What are you talking about, wanting to know what the people of the Sudetenland felt about all this?! Pfft. As if that matters.)

Anyway, that was all fine and dandy, Mr. Chamberlain truly believed that he had secured "peace in our time", and everything was just peachy. Except of course it wasn't because Hitler is a Terrible Person and immediately (well, in March '39) set about annexing the rest of Czechoslovakia and other European countries, which eventually lead to war in September '39, as of course everyone knows.

The problem is, whilst that's the version everyone knows, it isn't necessarily the right version. The Bad Man Hitler did some Bad Things, and everyone hates him. Of course, he did do some terrible, awful things, and my point is not to try to defend the indefensible, such as the Holocaust, but to argue that there are (almost always) two sides to every story. A lot of people truly believe that it was only Hitler who started the Second World War, and that is just not true. Yes, he played a part in it. But as the Historian AJP Taylor argues, in his brilliant book, Hitler did not set out to cause the war, but blundered into it as a result of the shortcomings of others.

Again, this is not an attempt to switch the blame and point to Chamberlain and the other allied leaders as being the 'Evil' ones - quite the opposite. Hitler and Chamberlain both thought that they were doing the right thing for their country, in creating the Munich Agreement. Chamberlain, like many of his generation, absolutely did not want a repeat of the horrors of World War One, and did all he could to appease Hitler and prevent another war. Hitler also had the specter of the First World War looming large around him, as he believed that Germany had been treated unfairly at the end of the war, and, faced with reparations that they could not even begin to pay, he felt forced to take matters into his own hands.

The problem with History is illustrated very neatly here - it's such a subjective subject that no one can ever say "this person was evil" or "this event was a good thing for everyone" because such simplistic judgments ignore key arguments and don't take into account all of the facts available. Hitler did do some unspeakably awful things, but at this point in time, he was merely trying to help his people as best he could - as were the other leaders of other countries. 

So, never accept anybody - Historian or otherwise - who tries to tell you that what their view is the 'right' view, and that all other arguments are worthless.

Unless that person is me :) 

An Introduction, Of Sorts:

I need to learn how to write. 

That is not to say I am completely illiterate - on the contrary, I know quite a few words, and have recently managed to learn how to string whole sentences together. But, despite my ability to talk the hind leg off a donkey, I cannot write about History very coherently, and as this is a fairly major requirement for any History degree, I feel it would be a good idea if I learnt how to.

So, this is what this blog is about. Well, that and hopefully showing people that there is more to the subject I love than the Hitler History Channel would have you believe. Yes, dear friends, there are more topics available to study than Germany 1914-18, or key battles in Word War Two. Amazing. Though, I should give them their due - occasionally, they'll show the odd documentary on the Tudors, which isn't so bad. I quite like the Tudors. But they do seem to have a firm belief that 98% of History happened between 1914 and 1918, and 1939 and 1945. Like I say, this clearly isn't true. The Tudors were around from 1487 to 1603 and everyone knows about Henry VIII and Elizabeth and...er...stuff.

I would like to do this as a sort of "On This Day..." type blog, though I know I won't be able to write on every day of the year, much as I would like to because I do have a life need to do some proper work, sometimes. But I hope to write as much as possible, and that anyone who reads this enjoys it.

I promise, when it's not about studying Hitler, History really is very interesting.